FAMILIAR CONTEXTS, FAMILIAR EMOTIONS? A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON CONTEXT-SPECIFIC EMOTION PROCESSES IN OLDER ADULTHOOD

Abstract As people age, their emotional well-being tends to be maintained or improves. Theories of adult development suggest that features of the context (e.g., more familiar environments) and successful management of emotions contribute to this effect. This talk focuses on how familiarity may promote emotional differentiation (e.g., knowing whether one feels angry or sad) in daily life, an important predecessor to emotion regulation success. A sample (N=290) of community participants between the ages of 25 and 85 years old completed an experience sampling study (6x/10days). When people were more familiar with their current situation, they differentiated more between emotions. The relationship between familiarity and differentiation was stronger for older adults than younger adults. These results support the perspective that emotional well-being benefits from wisdom accrued over the lifespan, such that older adults are at more of an advantage when their daily contexts afford for them to draw on their prior experiences.


SOCIAL DISPARITIES IN INFLAMMATORY BIOMARKERS MEDIATED BY POOR SLEEP QUALITY Joseph Obiagwu, Christina Mu, and Soomi Lee, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States
This study investigated whether sleep quality mediates the relationship between race/SES and biomarkers (CRP,IL6,IL10, BMI trajectories are associated with nighttime sleep, but it is less clear how they relate to daytime sleepiness. We examined the association between levels and changes in daytime sleepiness and BMI among men and women using growth curve models among 1047 participants in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study (mean [sd] age = 51.1 [8.0] years at baseline). The outcome variable was BMI (kg/m2). Key predictors were self-reported sleepiness measured by the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), and the objective Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) scores at each data collection wave. Men, but not women, who were sleepier had higher BMI levels. Age moderated the association between changes in ESS and MSLT sleepiness and BMI trajectories. The association was weaker for older men, but stronger for younger men; such effect was the opposite for women. The MSLT models further suggested that women who were sleepier had steeper increases in BMI over time.

NEW SPINS ON CLASSIC IDEAS ABOUT CONTEXT IN ADULT EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Chair: Tabea Springstein Co-Chair: Tammy English Individuals often experience improvements in emotional well-being into old age. Understanding mechanisms contributing to these emotional outcomes in daily contexts can inform ways to support healthy aging. Development is embedded within various contexts that shape individuals' experiences. Novel perspectives are emerging on how to conceptualize context and the way it can contribute to emotional development during the aging process. This symposium illustrates four innovative ways to consider contextual contributions to emotional well-being across adulthood. The first talk will use experience sampling to illustrate age differences in how daily situations contribute to emotion regulation related processes, showing that older adults can more easily distinguish between emotions when in familiar situations. The second talk will take a fresh perspective on psychosocial contexts by distinguishing between types of social interactions in couples, highlighting the important role of affection for well-being in adulthood. The third talk will introduce the idea that the body itself provides context for emotional processes, showcasing that the way this context affects emotional experience changes as individuals age. The fourth talk will center on how renewing our classical developmental models of context in modern ways can help to overcome shortcomings of previous research and provide insight into how engagement with environmental features contributes to well-being across the lifespan. In sum, this symposium features innovative perspectives on how context can be leveraged to gain a deeper understanding of psychosocial development into old adulthood and illustrates specific ways individuals can navigate their social world to preserve or improve mental health across adulthood.

FAMILIAR CONTEXTS, FAMILIAR EMOTIONS? A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON CONTEXT-SPECIFIC EMOTION PROCESSES IN OLDER ADULTHOOD
Tabea Springstein, and Tammy English, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States As people age, their emotional well-being tends to be maintained or improves. Theories of adult development suggest that features of the context (e.g., more familiar environments) and successful management of emotions contribute to this effect. This talk focuses on how familiarity may promote emotional differentiation (e.g., knowing whether one feels angry or sad) in daily life, an important predecessor to emotion regulation success. A sample (N=290) of community participants between the ages of 25 and 85 years old completed an experience sampling study (6x/10days). When people were more familiar with their current situation, they differentiated more between emotions. The relationship between familiarity and differentiation was stronger for older adults than younger adults. These results support the perspective that emotional well-being benefits from wisdom accrued over the lifespan, such that older adults are at more of an advantage when their daily contexts afford for them to draw on their prior experiences.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE? SPOUSES' AFFECTION ACROSS MARITAL INTERACTION CONTEXTS Claudia Haase, Jacquelyn Stephens, and Tabea Meier, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States
Affection is a positive emotion that plays an important role in intimate relationships. In a laboratory-based dyadic study of 52 middle-aged married couples (104 individuals) from highly diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, we examined spouses' subjective experience of affection across different marital interaction contexts, correlates, and specificity. Results showed that (1) wives and husbands experienced lower affection in a conflict conversation compared to a positive conversation. Moreover, (2) for wives, higher affection in the conflict conversation was associated with lower physiological reactivity (i.e., less heart rate acceleration from baseline to conflict discussion). For wives, higher affection was also associated with higher marital satisfaction for themselves and their husbands. These findings were specific to affection and did not robustly emerge for other positive emotions. These findings support views of affection as a positive, context-sensitive emotion that may become particularly important in intimate relationship conflict. Directions for future research are discussed.

AGING BODY AS CONTEXT: THE ROLE OF INTEROCEPTIVE AGING IN MID-AND LATE-LIFE EMOTION Jennifer MacCormack, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Interoceptive sensations (e.g., racing heart, clenched gut) are often closely tied to emotion. Older adults tend to exhibit reduced sensitivity and awareness of their interoceptive sensations relative to younger adults (e.g., Khalsa et al., 2009;Mikkelsen et al., 2019;Murphy et al., 2019), yet the emotional implications of such interoceptive differences remain unclear. Herein, I present two behavioral cross-sectional studies (N=350) documenting age differences in how adults (18-75 yrs) link their interoceptive sensations to emotions (Study 1: cognitive behavioral task; Study 2: experience sampling). Results reveal that from midlife into late life, coherence between interoceptive sensations and emotions increasingly weakens, both behaviorally and in self-reports. Age effects are most prominent for high arousal sensations and states. These findings provide converging evidence with recent neuroimaging results (MacCormack et al., 2020) showing the importance of interoceptive aging and related shifts in physiological arousal as potential pathways by which emotions transform across adulthood.

INFLUENCE OF EARTH, WIND, AND FIRE ON WELL-BEING: THE CLASSIC CONCENTRIC CIRCLES MODEL OF CONTEXT IS ALSO FROM THE 1970S
Michelle Ng 1 , Angelina Garron 1 , Denis Gerstorf 2 , and Nilam Ram 3 , 1. Stanford University,Palo Alto,California,United States,2. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin,Berlin,Berlin,Germany,3. Stanford University,Stanford,California,United States Classic bioecological models of human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) highlight the influence that five layers of context have on individuals' function and growth. Modern versions specifically highlight five specific aspects of context (socio-economic, social, physical, care/service, and technology) that influence both how older adults negotiate their daily lives and how they age. Using a collection of empirical findings obtained from our analyses of longitudinal panel data from the German SOEP, experience sampling data from iSAHIB, and screenome data from the Stanford HSP, we illustrate how differences in individuals' engagement with green spaces (earth), ambient air pollution (wind), and smartphones (fire) may contribute to differences in daily emotional well-being and developmental changes in life satisfaction. We then use these examples to elucidate shortcomings of the hierarchical models used to frame investigations of context and development for the past 40 years -and suggest the classic models be renewed rather than continually recycled.

CHARACTERISTICS OF OLDER ADULTS WHO DIED FROM OPIOIDS AS A CAUSE OF DEATH DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC Armiel Suriaga, and Ruth Tappen, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, United States
There was a 1,886% increase in opioid overdose deaths among people 55 years and above, from 518 in 1999 to 10,292 in 2019 in the U.S. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported a 30% increase in drug overdose deaths in 2020, where it claimed nearly 100000 American lives. However, few studies focused on the individual opioids that caused more deaths in the aging population and their death circumstances. This retrospective study aims to describe the sociodemographic characteristics of older adults who died from opioids as a cause of death (COD) in Florida during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, using descriptive statistics in SPSS 28. De-identified data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in 2020 were used in this study. A total of 1656 cases of decedents (ages > 65 years) were analyzed; 348 out of 1656 cases had opioids as a COD. Age ranged from 65 to 103, mean age of 73.31 (SD= 7.690). Majority of decedents were males (67.3%), non-Hispanic whites (86.5%). Nearly 80% died from accidents, suicide at 18.1%; 99.1% of cases happened in urban counties. Fentanyl caused more deaths (n=135), then morphine (n=48), oxycodone (n=42),